Rebuke to Dawkin's Ultimate 747 gambit - Argument supporting God's existence

[Andrew66]

Hello everyone,

I have been reading books, websites (both Atheist and Theist) and looking at the subject now for over a year with regards to a potential God's existence.

Having just read Richard Dawkins book "The God Delusion" I have come up with what seems to me the most reasonable attempt at an argument which while not prooving a God's existence, makes the possibility of God (in my view at least) quite reasonable.

Argument for God's Existence:
(A rebuke to Dawkins Ultimate 747 Gambit).

God = An intelligent. conscious, personal and purposeful creator / designer of our world which we find ourselves in. Further, God is interactive with our existant World, and offers us a moral guide and path to salvation through Jesus Christ.

1) From nothing, nothing comes.

Support - Most philosophers and scientists seem to accept this principle (atheist and theist alike).. from utter non-existence there is no potential or capacity from which anything of any sort could arise.

2) The Universe (the term "Universe" will include our observable Universe plus any potential Multiverse) comprises a series of consectutive contigent states or varying configurations of matter and energy.

Support - This is true to general observation - and is in obedience to the first law of thermodynamics (that existing matter and energy is neither created or destroyed, but merely changes form).

3) An eternal, infinite series of contingent states of matter / energyis generally, according to most philosophers and scientists (atheist and theist alike) considered unlikely.

Support - an infinite series of contigent states (or infinte re-gress) leads to both philosophical and scientific problems such as a) Given an infinite regress, any point in time, like our present, could never be arrived at as an infinite - and therefore impassible- amount of time must elapse to get there - but this is absurd because we are clearly here; and b) Present scientific theorms in cosmology seem to support an absolute beginning state of matter and energy.

4) Given (3), many philosphers and scientists (atheist and theist alike) agree that there must have been some uncreated, eternal "necessary" agent which serves as the basis or explanation of our world of contigent states or configurations of matter/energy.

Support, posit (4) solves the problems of an infinite regress of contigent staes and provides a potential hypothesis for the origin of contigent states.

5) Richard Dawkins in his book "God Delusion" suggests that such neccesary agent as posited in (5) must be "simple" in configuration - as it is highly unlikely that an initial uncreated (and non-designed) entity could or should be complex. To quote Dawkins (pg 52 God Delusion), "Any creative intelligence of sufficient complexity to design anything comes into existence only as the end produt of an extended product of evolution. Creative intelligence being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it".

*Note: This argument above (5) has been labelled by Dawkins as the "747 gambit", as many theists state the liklihood of origin of life on earth is as likely as if the wind blew the sand on a dessert stretch and the sand molecules by random luck formed into a Boeing 747 jet, and Dawkins simply points out that alleged God as an explanation of life is the ultimate Boeing 747 - God being incredibly complex and hence requiring its own explanation.

6) However, we can say that if an eternal, necessary, uncreated agent exists and comprises the explanation for all following contigent states of matter/energy - such necessary agent by its own inherent nature was, along with having the power and the aptitude to do so, irregardless of (5), at least sufficiently complex to initiate the process of evolving contigent states which lead to extremely high levels of complexity (eg. intelligent conscious life - human life).

7) From (6) we can say that, even though from (5) we gather it to be unlikely, the uncreated necessary agent must of had a significant and infact very high degree of complexity in its own nature.

Support: The initial uncreated necessary agent had a programming which once initiated lead to a process which gave rise to incredibly complex end products (aka concious life). By our experience, it is more reasonable than unreasonable to label such programming which is inherent to such neccessary agent as complex, as extremely complex end products result.

8) Because a product of such necessary agent is conscious life - whereby existence therefore begins to "matter" (as conscious life can experience joy and happiness -things that most would agree actually have value and therefore matter), this suggests and supports the existence of an altruistic motive or purpose assigned to the sufficiently complex necessary agent. Altruistic motive or purpose suggests and supports personal intelligence.

Support: If there were no conscious entities which arose as products eminating from the necessary agent, nothing would really matter or have any value as we understand it. There would be no point or potential purpose for anything. However, this is not the case...

9) Posit (8) supports a hypothesis that such necessary agent is a personal - altruistic creator.

1 - 9 supports existence of a Diest God.

10) Given posits (1 - 9) it is not unreasonable to believe that such a personal, altruistic creator would have at some point of time during the era of human conscousness revealled itself or communicated with human kind to some degree (such as in messages regarding the agent's intentions and plans for human kind).

11) The best of all historical records which support such communication, as judged by impact factor and quality of historical records, and supported by the recounting of miracles - appear to arise from the Christian faith as outlined in the Biblical scriptures.

Support: One could debate of course the validity of any number of religions, Muslim being a major competitor to Christianity. From my readings there appears to be best support for Christianity - and I would refer any who are interested to the book "Reasonable Faith" by William Craig which discusses in good detail the validity of the historicity of the Christian account. Regardless of one's persnal choice in selection of religion, the point is it is not unreasonalbe to believe that one of the religions out there is essentially truthful (and that the the others are fabricated). This is why people study the religions which are availalbe to make their own personal choice.

12) The Christian Faith (as well as the Muslim faith - and most others) teaches an interactive God, and a means to salvation.

10 - 12 supports existence of a Theist God.

Discussion:

I don't expect this line of reasoning to sway any of you Atheists out there, but I thought I would take the time to break it down and show how the mind and the reasoning of a Theist may work. If there is a serious misgiving or objection to the validity of any of posits 1 through 12, I would like to hear from you as to what such objections may be??!

However I would ask that such objections be directed at one posit at a time (one posit per entry- from my experinece it is too difficult and convoluted to entertain a full gambit of objects at once). More than one object at a time also makes the reading a bit too difficult for third party followers. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Thanks everyone and have a great day.

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

[Smellyoldgit]

Andrew66 wrote

God = An intelligent. conscious, personal and purposeful creator / designer of our world which we find ourselves in. Further, God is interactive with our existant World, and offers us a moral guide and path to salvation through Jesus Christ.

FAIL!!
Your premise = your predetermined conclusion


The remainder is your regulation bullshit.

[ghoulslime]

Fail!

Please try again!

[Andrew66]

Smellyoldgit wrote

FAIL!!
Your premise = your predetermined conclusion


The remainder is your regulation bullshit.

Smellyoldgit,

I don't understand your objection (thanks for keeping it to one..) - I was merely defining what I mean when I say "God" as background to the later premises and the argument (the God definition is not a premise in of itself). I have found when a definition of "God" is not supplied along with an argument referencing "God" this frustrates readers - so I supplied one.

The Argument is intended to support a predetermined conclusion - isn't that what arguments are for?

Thanks for your reply.

[Davin]

Andrew66 wrote

Hello everyone,

Hello again.

Andrew66 wrote

I have been reading books[pointless setting onseself up as some kind of authority stuff]

Andrew66 wrote

Argument for God's Existence:
(A rebuke to Dawkins Ultimate 747 Gambit).

God = An intelligent. conscious, personal and purposeful creator / designer of our world which we find ourselves in. Further, God is interactive with our existant World, and offers us a moral guide and path to salvation through Jesus Christ.

1) From nothing, nothing comes.

Support - Most philosophers and scientists seem to accept this principle (atheist and theist alike).. from utter non-existence there is no potential or capacity from which anything of any sort could arise.

Aye, god falls into that though.

Andrew66 wrote

[Even more stuff]

Really, you could stop at 1. This whole argument can be summed up into one fallacy: special pleading. "The universe can't come from nothing, but god can."

[West491]

Davin wrote

Really, you could stop at 1. This whole argument can be summed up into one fallacy: special pleading. "The universe can't come from nothing, but god can."

QFT

[Andrew66]

Davin wrote

Hello again.



Aye, god falls into that though.

Really, you could stop at 1. This whole argument can be summed up into one fallacy: special pleading. "The universe can't come from nothing, but god can."

Hi Davin

Thanks for your objection regarding posit 1 (and thanks for keeping it to one objection) makes response much easier.

Lending an objection to the very first premise in an argument is a compelling debating tactic, definately tends to deflate the author!

However I find it hard to believe that you disagree with posit 1. Virtually no-one believes (according to my reading at least) that at any point in time there was actually ever a condition of absolute non-existence. This simply means that something of some sort must have always existed (aka a necessary agent)... and God is not even enterred into argument yet in premise 1.

Further at no point in the argument does it state that God (or the alleged required necessary agent - in whatever form) came for nothing... The necessary agent is as argued (by definition) necessarily uncreated, and eternal - not implied to have come or ever originated "from nothing".

[West491]

Didn't you already ask us how we felt about the Kalam Cosmological Argument? Did you think that our same old and tired rebuttal to the same old and tired argument would change over the course of a few days?

[Andrew66]

West491 wrote

Didn't you already ask us how we felt about the Kalam Cosmological Argument? Did you think that our same old and tired rebuttal to the same old and tired argument would change over the course of a few days?

I West

Its been a year, and I've been studying alot..

Thh present argument is more than Kalam, it gets into the concept of a required complexity into the initial conditions of existence, and with that an additional appearnce of purposeful motive in production of conscious life. - all of which are beyond Kalam.

I agree it would be seen as a tiring expense of effort to try to rebut my present argument, but if you have the time or inclination, maybe just rebut one of the premisses... if you believe any such premise has a greater unliklihood of potnetial truth to it.??

[Irreligious]

Andrew66 wrote

God = An intelligent. conscious, personal and purposeful creator / designer of our world which we find ourselves in. Further, God is interactive with our existant World, and offers us a moral guide and path to salvation through Jesus Christ.

Does your alleged god have a brain? If not, kindly demonstrate for us how you can know that your allegation exhibits consciousness.

Do you allege that this thing you're asserting is a person? If it is not a person, kindly demonstrate how can it be personal, personable or anything having to do with the human attribute of personhood?

How, exactly, do you allege that this asserted thing of yours interacts with anyone or anything? Would you kindly provide us with a demonstration of precisley how it is alleged to operate?

Do you allege that it has a brain, lungs, a windpipe, vocal chords, a tongue, teeth and lips with which to communicate speech? Is it your contention that it has fingers with which to type its thoughts on a keyboard? Do you allege that it operates by telepathy? If so, kindly explain how you or anyone else would establish that telepathic communication is real and that you are privy to this alleged mode of communication?

Does this thing you're alleging exists have a material body? If so, how is that body sustained? Does it require nourishment? Is it required to breathe in order to live? If this thing you're alleging is without a material body, how does it convey its morality to anyone?

Kindly demonstrate that you can know anything about the method by which this asserted thing of yours allegedly operates.

[Davin]

Andrew66 wrote

Hi Davin

Thanks for your objection regarding posit 1 (and thanks for keeping it to one objection) makes response much easier.

Lending an objection to the very first premise in an argument is a compelling debating tactic, definately tends to deflate the author!

However I find it hard to believe that you disagree with posit 1. Virtually no-one believes (according to my reading at least) that at any point in time there was actually ever a condition of absolute non-existence. This simply means that something of some sort must have always existed (aka a necessary agent)... and God is not even enterred into argument yet in premise 1.

Further at no point in the argument does it state that God (or the alleged required necessary agent - in whatever form) came for nothing... The necessary agent is as argued (by definition) necessarily uncreated, and eternal - not implied to have come or ever originated "from nothing".

I was just following your request, I had problems with many more of your points, I figured I'd just work my way up.

If you're trying to come from a rationaly base position, trying to support an assertion with a fallacy ("Virtually no-one believes[...]" appeal to majority/authority), is not the way to go. I care almost fuck all for beliefs, and even less for the beliefs of the majorities, what I care about is reality.

The special pleading is the same no matter how you word it, you assert that this agent always existed, then created the universe, while this is all well and good, it's an extra complexity to the universe simply always existing. Now I have no beliefs one way or the other, I'll wait until we have reasonable evidence, but to say that a god simply always existed and that a universe did not, is just special pleading... a classic, textbook example of special pleading at that.

[Sternwallow]

Andrew66 wrote

God = An intelligent. conscious, personal and purposeful creator / designer of our world which we find ourselves in. Further, God is interactive with our existant World, and offers us a moral guide and path to salvation through Jesus Christ.

Andrew, you have hugely over-defined this item, exactly contrary to your earlier request to operate on a point by point basis. As such, it attempts to hide a link between a simple mechanism of creation and many other unsubstantiated characteristics.

[Sternwallow]

Andrew66 wrote

1) From nothing, nothing comes.

Support - Most philosophers and scientists seem to accept this principle (atheist and theist alike).. from utter non-existence there is no potential or capacity from which anything of any sort could arise.

Whether a premise is accepted or not by powerful thinkers does not affect its correctness. Honest philosophers admit that they can't imagine how an absolute nothingness could be replaced by something.

On what do you base your claim that nothing can come from nothing or that nothing comes from nothing?

As it stands, that nothing cannot exist, anything that does exist does so because it has to, yet not because of some god's whim.

Your first premise, that there is or can be or ever was a state of absolute nothingness is unsupported.

[Demigod79]

Andrew66 wrote

3) An eternal, infinite series of contingent states of matter / energyis generally, according to most philosophers and scientists (atheist and theist alike) considered unlikely.

Support - an infinite series of contigent states (or infinte re-gress) leads to both philosophical and scientific problems such as a) Given an infinite regress, any point in time, like our present, could never be arrived at as an infinite - and therefore impassible- amount of time must elapse to get there - but this is absurd because we are clearly here; and b) Present scientific theorms in cosmology seem to support an absolute beginning state of matter and energy.

And so you posit an eternal, timeless entity (which by its very nature can never make anything happen) to solve this problem? Perhaps you missed the point that Dawkins was making, which is that a God explanation only makes the problem bigger, thus fails as an explanation (you don't solve a problem by making it bigger).

[West491]

Andrew66 wrote

Its been a year, and I've been studying alot..

I get the feeling you haven't studied anything but the babble because your argument has barely changed since you first arrived on this forum.

We are repetitively telling you what is glaringly wrong with your argument (which is, btw, just a souped up KCA with the same flawed premise)- hitting you over the head with logic and sufficient rebuttals yet you keep peddling the same shit, ignoring the input and charging through the forum like a mentally-deficient bull.

If you don't understand that the proposing of an intelligent designer of the universe doesn't solve your "first cause" problem, then you're beyond any help that I can offer. Period.